UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Neela Yennawar, research professor with Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and director of the X-Ray Crystallography and Scattering and Biomolecular Interactions Core Facilities, has been named the institutes' new director of instrumentation grant initiatives.
Yennawar brings decades of research experience and a record of successful funding to the role. As a core facility director since 2005, she has led collaborations with labs across multiple Penn State colleges and campuses, resulting in more than 260 co-authored publications; been principal investigator on more than $4 million across nine equipment grants; and helped secure nearly $2 million more as co-principal investigator on various collaborative research grants.
"Neela has an outstanding track record in acquiring instrumentation through grants,” said Craig Praul, director of core facilities for the Huck. “I am excited that she is now going to have the opportunity to share her knowledge and experience with our other core facilities to help them acquire the instrumentation we need to remain at the cutting edge of life science research."
Yennawar will continue as director of the two facilities she currently oversees, but will have an increased leadership presence, supporting other core directors in developing and submitting major instrumentation grant proposals. The new role builds on her experience as a 2023-24 Huck Leadership Fellow, in which she led an effort that identified single-molecule optical tweezer C-Trap equipment as a priority and piloted a new acquisition model for high-end instrumentation.
“We have successfully established a unique biophysical characterization capability at Penn State through the continuous growth of our two core research facilities,” Yennawar said. “Our collective vision to advance scientific discovery has driven a major expansion of our infrastructure, opening new frontiers for interdisciplinary research.”
She pointed to the the expertise and facilities across the University.
“Penn State's scientific talent is immense,” Yennawar said. “With unified leadership for research resources, we can transform our core facilities from basic service units into a self-sustaining funding engine, driving utilization growth, supporting cross-disciplinary research across more than 20 departments, and securing Penn State’s global impact and visibility for the next decade.”
Yennawar's academic career began at Bangalore University in India, where she studied physics, chemistry, and mathematics before earning her master’s in physics. She went on to complete a doctorate in physics at the Indian Institute of Science, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship with Penn State’s Department of Chemistry. After gaining industry experience at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, Yennawar returned to Penn State as a research associate in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In 2005, she was named director of what is now the X-Ray Crystallography and Scattering Core Facility and in 2009 added the Automated Biological Calorimetry Core Facility, which is now the Biomolecular Interactions Core Facility, to her portfolio. In 2022, Yennawar was promoted to research professor.